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cation of the anti-Jewish fabrication known as
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
in January 1906
sparked a new wave of violence with pogroms in
Gomel, Yalta, Vologda, Simbirsk, and again
Białystok. The port of Odessa was an epicenter
of anti-Semitic violence during these years; in
addition to the pogroms already mentioned, it
witnessed one in July 1906, one in May 1907,
and one in June 1907. The outbreak of World
War I triggered more anti-Jewish violence in the
areas near the front. The 1917 Russian Revolu-
tion and the civil war that followed triggered yet
another round of anti-Semitic violence, again
concentrated in Ukraine. Although the Soviet
government prohibited anti-Semitic violence, it
was unable to prevent it among its own troops,
let alone among the Whites and the various
nationalist and bandit groups that emerged. It is
estimated that by the end of the civil war in late
1920, close to 2,000 pogroms left a total of
100,000 dead Jews and 500,000 homeless. These
numbers would unfortunately pale when com-
pared with the horrendous human cost of the
Nazi German occupation of parts of the USSR
during World War II, as a result of the Germans'
extermination of Jews and other minorities.
berg or Lwow), while Prussia took a smaller area
in northwestern Poland that enabled it to link its
East Prussian territories with those to the west of
Poland. In the next two decades, Poland tried to
institute a number of reforms to prevent further
action by its neighbors, including instituting a
hereditary constitutional monarchy, but it
proved to be in vain. Russia took the lead in pro-
moting the Second Partition, which came in Jan-
uary 1793. Russia obtained a vast territory with
about 3 million inhabitants that included most of
Lithuania and most of western Ukraine. Prussia
took the area known as Great Poland, as well as
the towns of Danzig (Gdansk) and Thorn, while
Austria did not participate in the Second Parti-
tion. A great Polish uprising led by Tadeusz
Kosciuszko in March 1794 failed to stem the tide
toward the completed dismemberment of
Poland, which came with the Third Partition of
October 1795. Austria took the city of Kraków
and land to the north up to the Bug and Vistula
Rivers, while Prussia pushed its border eastward
to the Niemen River, adding the city of Warsaw
to its domains. Russia again seized the largest
amount of territory, adding the rest of Lithuania
and Ukraine up to the Niemen and Bug Rivers,
an area with an estimated 1.2 million inhabi-
tants. After the Third Partition, Poland ceased to
exist as an independent state until 1918.
Polish partitions
Three 18th-century territorial divisions of the
Kingdom of Poland by its neighbors, Russia,
Prussia, and Austria, that took place during the
reign of
CATHERINE II
. By the early 1770s,
Poland's internal divisions and a weak, decen-
tralized political system had led to a political
paralysis that fed the territorial ambitions of its
three neighbors. In the First Partition (August
1772), Poland lost territories with a total of
about 4.5 million people, which amounted to
one-third of its territory and close to one-third of
its population. Russia pushed its border west-
ward up to the Western Dvina River and the
Dnieper River, an area with about 1.3 million
people. Austria took an equally large, but more
densely populated, territory that included Gali-
cia, western Podolia, and the city of Lvov (Lem-
Polish Rebellion of 1830-31
Also known as the November Insurrection, the
Polish rebellion of 1830-31 was the first of two
19th-century attempts by Polish patriots in Rus-
sian-occupied Poland to undo the legacy of the
18th-century Polish partitions. By 1830, the dis-
appointments and animosities of almost four
decades of Russian rule had boiled over. Inspired
by the recent French Revolution of 1830 which
had overthrown Louis-Philippe, Polish soldiers
formed a secret society, the National Association
against Russia, to overthrow their Russian over-
lords. Confident of French aid, Polish members
of the Warsaw Training School who feared their
replacement by Russians openly rebelled on
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